Food & Farming

Farmers and growers talked openly at local agricultural, food and cultural festivals and in a discussion group at Small World Theatre. The project provided opportunities for them to express the challenges they face in protecting the river, living by the river and restoring its health.

Mapping the river workshops comments:

  • Undercropping of maize with rye grass is important to stabilise the soil to reduce silt build up in the river - but people don’t do it because the drone equipment for seeding is too expensive for one farm.
  • Industrial farming started in 1930s. Farms now are much bigger and they almost all spread slurry and artificial fertilisers now, which were unheard of before.
  • Trees as buffer along water courses (for water, slurry buffer and shade)
  • There is no commercial fishing here now - now coracles.
  • It’s interesting how culture influences farming practices. Dic Jones used poetry to describe the land in a way that farmers could relate to. It broke the mould of more cerebral approach poetry.
  • Everything is driven towards monoculture, but that not what previous generations of traditional farmers did. And it’s that re-connecting with the story, of what farmers today have taken from their ancestors and how they used to farm.
  • The farmers are led by funding to maximise their income using chemical to get more crops a year and it’s sacrificed the soil. We will be appealing to farmers to reduce the chemicals because it’s cheaper for them. A lot of farmers will do this now because they want to be environmentally friendly and the price of chemicals has shot through the roof.
  • We need to think about what we’re willing to pay as consumers for food.
  • I'm always chatting to people and I see all sorts. I see TB is spreading around. You get a lot of slurry that's spread on fields and that's where the hot spots are, and you also get the run off.
  • I've been writing to Keir Starmer and the Badger Trust and various other people, to join together to find solutions. (It's been harder since Brexit). Basically, using anaerobic digestion to break down the slurry and significantly reducing pathogens. So you have less water spread on the fields and in that process you're breaking the TB as well.
  • It also means that you're not spreading TB by not driving through all that slurry. You don't have to have big tractors, a big diesel carbon footprint and big lagoons.
  • You don't get the runoff into the river Teifi particularly. Also, you can produce electricity from the anaerobic digesters to power local farms and the economy.
  • You can do all these things, but there's not enough infrastructure. It takes imagination and determination. Currently there's an attitude in my age group that they can't make changes, yet they're taking thousands in subsidies and they need to change their ways.
  • It's only been like this since the war. It's wasn't that long ago really. We're still mopping up from the Industrial Revolution. There's no incentive from central government to clean up our act and it's down to having the funding to get people to change. In my opinion, if farmers want hand-outs, they should sign up to an environmental scheme. If they don't ultimately they don't get. If they're part of the scheme, that part of the country.
  • This thing with the capital gains tax and parceling up the farm... farms should be companies, farmers are directors and they pass it on. That way, they don't have death duties, but they are stewards of the countryside.
  • I've worked all over Britain and Europe as a cattleman, shepherd, tractor driver. I've lived in France and Germany. Now we've got a smallholding just down the road. I grew up living off the land. You have to respect it. You take care of it and your topsoil. You can't mulch your way through the land, strip back (because that how you encourage biodiversity). We forest garden.
  • When you live off the land, you're hungry and your life depends on it, you can either go down the route of shooting and killing everything (which is shortsighted) or you can work towards the future and for the generations in front of you.
  • I'd just get people back into their gardens. When they're gardening they can see how the weather affects it and all the politics that come into play because of climate change. They see how the politics are affecting their flowers.
  • I mean, I've worked with corporates, obviously, but I'm caught up. So in the weather you get different people coming in with encounters with the lawyers, the villains and the gangsters, the youngsters. They all felt something going on and their idea was something like, we have a locked electric gates and go away. Some will go to Spain, some do this, but they all felt it, but they all felt it in their own cultures and other languages.
  • You see all the pollution running into the river and it's obvious. It's changing people's attitudes that matters, and that's the hardest thing I find. The country is fragmented at the moment. We need to work as a team.
  • Climate change is triggering everything. We're in a society that is grabbing land, territories, minerals and the water. You can see things running out, especially when you've got big farms with 3000 dairy cows.
  • I am already farming with nature, so I am hoping that the new system will support me to do so. I leave areas of wetland because I always knew it would be foolish to try to farm there.
  • It’s about working with what the land gives you, not forcing it. If we can get recognition for that, then the system is moving in the right direction.
  • It’s all good saying we want nature on the farms, but we also need to produce food. I can’t give up good farmland for that.
  • My neighbour wanted to reestablish the reed beds on the Poppit side of the river because they’re such a great resource for biodiversity.
  • The farmers are led by funding to maximise their income, and they use chemicals to get more crops. This has sacrificed the soil. We (Welsh Gov/Plaid) will be appealing to farmers to reduce the chemicals that are cheaper for them to use. A lot of farmers will do this because they want to be environmentally friendly, and also the price of chemicals has shot through the roof.
  • As consumers, we need to think about what we’re willing to pay as consumers for food.
  • A lot of slurry is spread on fields and that's where the TB hot spots and the runoff into the river. The solution in my opinion is to use anaerobic digestion to break down the slurry and significantly reducing pathogens. You have less water spread on the fields and running into the river Teifi. In that process you're breaking spread of TB as well.
  • We are in some very stressful times. Farming has always been tough, but I feel like it’s just unpredictable these days.”
  • I must make a living and that is my number one priority. Of course, I want to do the best, but I need something to support me in that.
  • Too much bureaucracy these days.
  • I remember the time when farming and nature co-existed properly. We farmed with the land and with the seasons and you knew that was the best way to do it.

Please follow the link to The People's Plan to read the Community's Recommendations